When I look at the first three weeks of the 2015 Major League Baseball season, this is what I see for the Pittsburgh Pirates: opportunity. If I had to describe the Pirates first 19 games this year, the word I would probably use is fine. The offense has had its share of fits and starts, the bullpen is a little bit uneven, and the rotation has been great but probably started out a bit over their heads and are coming back to earth. Essentially the first 19 games have been the beginning of a Gerrit Cole breakthrough with just enough of everything else for the club to be 11-8. 11-8 is not exciting like the Mets’ 14-4 is exciting, but it’s fine. It’s a 94-win pace. There’s a thrill that comes from the possibility that this club’s best baseball is still in front of it, though, and when you couple that with a Cardinal team that might have finally found the bottom of its endless supply of pitching with Adam Wainwright’s injury and a Cub team that is both thrillingly and terrifyingly young (and with a suspect pitching staff, to boot), I can’t help but look at the lay of the land in the NL Central both this year and down the road and think that this year could be the year the door is most open for the Pirates.
Of course, a whole lot of that top paragraph is idle early-season prattling. The only thing that will decide where the NL Central goes this year is games between the NL Central teams, and the Pirates have six road games this week against the Cubs and the Cardinals. These six games will not define anybody’s season, but they will help create the context for games further down the road that will define the season. One of the unfinished posts in my drafts folder that I’d most like to explore in the near future is the idea that the Pirates are actually too comfortably built into PNC Park; their pitchers and outfielders in particular are specifically deployed to take advantage of PNC, but last year’s Pirates often looked out of sorts on the road, and I’ve sort of idly wondered whether or not having a more ballpark-neutral team would benefit the Pirates (this is, again, just the seed of an idea; something to think about rather than any sort of declaration). It’s that thought that makes me really curious to see how these six games go; last year’s Pirates would have won the NL Central with just a .500 record on the road. Is that somewhere that this year’s Pirate team can improve?
Anyway, the Pirates are at Wrigley Field tonight, and in a rarity all three of these games this week will be night games. Jason Hammel starts for the Cubs tonight. He’s given up a home run in each of his three starts this year and the Pirates dinged him for four runs (three earned) last time they met. Vance Worley goes for the Bucs. If the Pirates can get one of the first two games in this series before Gerrit Cole pitches in the finale, I suspect they’ll be in good shape.
First pitch tonight is at 8:05.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
